


après minuit

by fourthdimnsion



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Experimental Style, Loki has anxiety, M/M, Panic Attacks, Proof Read Once, Triggers, what more i have to say this came out from a rant, yes i was venting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26166085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourthdimnsion/pseuds/fourthdimnsion
Summary: Loki was fond of silence and every sort of peace that comes with it, except when he's overloaded with thoughts and unwelcoming feelings, except when there's an unknown scream echoing inside his mind, making it hard to hold himself to not fall apart; except everything that isn't exactly peace.En Dwi is in the same room, witnessing it.
Relationships: En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Loki
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	après minuit

**Author's Note:**

> .......... so i guess its my birthday huh
> 
> TW: panic attack, anxiety. be careful, please

There’s a scream coming from inside his head that he cannot distinguish from who it is. It sounded like a toddler, a newborn baby. Sometimes, it resonated as a child. There were moments where it’s so strong, so guttural and so deep that he could almost, _almost_ , assume that it comes from an old person, an adult or an elderly person. None of these cannot explain why he hears them. 

Desperation comes in, making his heart pound faster with the thought of it. As must as the god very much appreciated the silence and the little-to-no moments that he got to be on a quiet place, being able to hear and feel his own breathing without sounding so automatic and so robotic, he’s hit with the thought of— Not the _thought_ _of_ , but the feeling that weigh his chest and allow him to feel. Fuck. He isn’t honest even to himself, even to when he’s alone, even when nobody’s around to see and comments, _oh, did the god of mischief fail in his new plan? Did he finally get his sentence?_ , because he got enough of hearing those even when he had heard just the tip of the iceberg. 

So, in the moment he hears this scream — at night, he should have fallen asleep on the bed within the Grandmaster’s embrace —, he’s surprised and hit with an intense wave of agony that he hadn’t felt for so long. Either he had — and he made sure to brush it off as he always did —, but this time he couldn’t get along with the pertinent lie that lies in his life for years since he was born. 

He can still hear the scream. It isn’t nonstop. It has a pause, as if breathing, and it goes along again. His chest weighs more, sinking into himself, into the blackhole inside the whole universe that he carries inside himself and in his eyes, that ocean blue eyes that might become the dullness of grey within seconds. He sighs. It doesn’t help, though; there’s an invisible pressure around his neck that pulls him to the edge as it tightens more. And more. And more. He cannot lie. It’s his own scream, the other screaming at him to run, to go somewhere, to leave to a safer place — but he cannot leave. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go. He’s stuck in his own pretty little horrible facade he created for himself and cannot let go of it, and there’s another hand — stronger, larger than his own and quite too warm despite the space’s coldness — gripping his neck, closing his throat, making him cry, leaving him for dead. 

A tear runs down his face as he cannot see anyone but terror itself, unable to do anything but yell and yell and not let it sound by any circumstances. 

  
  
  


Loki seems sad. Seems dead. 

Since they became something more, something special to each other, it’s the first time the Grandmaster had got the chance to see him so openly sad nearby him. There were moments — the hardly, unexpected ones — where he got a glimpse of his sadness by the curves of his lips or the long-length time Loki spent looking deep down his eyes, searching for something to hold onto. It isn’t hard to get to know him, especially since the night he’d seen the god of mischief in a silent, quiet room with tears running down his face and he was clearly fighting against them to stop for once. The Grandmaster had counted how much time had passed as he stood there, behind a half-closed door, and he concluded that it would be more than 10 minutes if Loki hadn’t suddenly straightened his posture and recomposed himself in a matter of seconds. From there and since then, they’d never exchanged a single word about it. At least Loki didn’t, and En Dwi simply got along with. 

Yet, now— There is it. If it’s that same night again but this time it’s raining. 

The Grandmaster had lifted slightly his head as he searched for Loki’s presence somewhere in the bed. He wasn’t there and he would be okay with that. But then, the sound of a sigh made him shiver and look up, and see him looking at nowhere. 

That was just… Three minutes ago. 

Through the darkness of the night and a few lightning cracking upon the sky, all he could see in his blurred — that was getting clearer at each instant — vision was the movement of his hands, closing and opening them and repeating it, breathing deeply. En Dwi couldn’t guess how much that was happening, yet, he slowly got up and started to do something when he saw tears running down his face. He hated when his stardust cried; but that was new, that was different, and he didn’t think that he would even see this. Didn’t think that Loki would allow him to see his damnation. 

He took a few slow steps. En Dwi had— Witnessed that before, many times when a newer host came in Sakaar or when a warrior was about to get in the Arena. Yet there’s a difference between someone new and someone that doesn’t know anything from this place from someone that has been on his side for a while, and, well, was a god and has lived long. There’s a bigger difference when that person in question was his partner and was breaking down in front of him, falling apart without leaving his body, but his soul. 

En Dwi sat down next to him. The shy approach made him see better what was in his eyes, behind them, only to find that they’re propositally avoiding his gaze and once more not allowing him to see what makes his vision blurry; even though it’s clear by his face soaked with tears. En Dwi urged to wipe them and stroke a finger through his soft, cold skin — to get closer and closer and hold him and let him cry freely without fearing any sort of complaints and everything else — but, suddenly, he felt as if the same night was actually repeating itself in front of his eyes. That is, just for a second.

  
  
  


Loki’s deep breaths weren’t so deep neither slow now. They were contained — they contained his own scream that would’ve been shouted if he wasn’t scared of it and didn’t want to hear it and feel it echoing in his head. He didn’t want to shout at the someone inside his head screaming for help because he, too, couldn’t help himself nor help anybody. He couldn’t answer. 

He couldn’t even hold himself, take a grip on his soul from stopping it from leaving his body, from leaving him helpless once more. He couldn’t. 

Loki felt so fragile. 

If the god was strong enough, he would avoid himself from breaking. 

Yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. 

Terror and shame walked alongside him as he wanted to walk backwards, but that was inevitable; in all the paths he walked, all of them he will be haunted. 

Then, what— What could he do? 

Loki simply closed his eyes, exhausted, uncertain. 

  
  
  


“Stardust?”

His heart sunk and it didn’t flutter with his voice. Sometimes being known hurted more as being left unknown, unseen; but it hurted more to be ignored. He didn’t know what was worse. 

His eyes fell to the ground and suddenly, it felt hard to be between accepting and fighting against. 

A warm touch from the tip of a finger contrasted against the cold in his hand, slowly becoming a gentle gesture of holding hands. 

“Stardust,” En Dwi’s softened voice was so quiet in his ears, “what happened to you?” 

For a moment, Loki was afraid of his own voice — was afraid that it would break in the middle of a simple sentence and he wouldn’t withhold his tears. He hated when that happened, which was almost like _never_ , yet the possibilities were terrifying for living so. 

The grip tightened as his thumb gently caressed his fingers. 

“Loki…” He muttered once again, trying to call him back to reality. “Darling, tell me…”

Tell, talk— He really wanted to. 

However, all he could do was to rise his face and open his eyes whom he didn’t knew whether was their color; if they shine in blues or greens, if they burned in ire or they became a river of tears that never fell, its waters so crystalline, so peaceful yet so silent and condescending. No, he didn’t go right upon his brown eyes whose, when meeting sunlight, are brought into gold. He felt undeserving of those, genuinely speaking of. 

“I’m sorry,” that’s all Loki said now, in a solemn whisper. “I— I couldn’t—” 

There it is. He’s two steps from breaking. 

“Couldn’t do what, stardust?” Again, En Dwi’s smooth voice sounded in his ears. It caused him even more pain and, somehow, Loki wanted to let go of that grip and really go away, far away only to be alone — but no one could really tell what he would do by being alone. That scared him, too. Everything felt so horrible now. And he was moving, he was doing something his body couldn’t explain that led En Dwi into saying, “If you… No, wait, what are you doing?”

Until he just noticed what he was doing. 

“ _I don’t know!_ ” Loki said a bit too loud, his back touching the glass from the windows that leads them into seeing the landscape beneath them, almost pressing it by him going backwards. Unconsciously, his hand went to his throat, trying to find where the tightened grip comes from. “I don’t know, En Dwi, I don’t—” And then, tears which he tried to hold back began to fall with the sound of the elder’s name on his mouth. Inevitable. “I don’t know…” 

Shame. 

He rubbed his face, trying to regain control of himself. It kept falling. It kept tightening. It was hard to breathe because he was holding too much to his physical, too much inside his chest that it actually hurts and it sinks further into a void, and all of that because he cannot verbalize all the things that culminate in his mind until ever. Because, somehow, there was never someone or something that he could actually be comfortable with to say it— To say, as a final, about how tired he is from hearing that ongoing scream. How tired of that same old agony he is, and how that’s so hurtful that he cannot do something to change thanks to the roots created and never cut down, and it would take days and millenia to take it off. Yet, who knows where he’ll be to say it, to feel it? He doesn’t know and cannot pinpoint it, and certainly will not spare his time in overthinking when there’s _always_ something left to do. 

But this cycle he established himself in — it kills him. It drains him and tears him apart. If there’s somewhere in the universe where people do write someone else’s destiny, knowing or not who they are, Loki would certainly go after the author of his own and rip the screenplay of his miserable, stupid immortal life. If the author survives or not isn’t his matter now — he just wanted to end this. _End_ as a whole, start again somehow, somewhere, but safe and less bad about his own existence. Who would be with him? Doesn’t matter, even though all he wanted was to be with En Dwi just a little longer— 

And he’s there. The elder is there, between the shade of his fingers covering his face in the midst of another breakdown. He’s there. He waited there, patiently, in the quietness that Loki’s mind couldn’t offer to himself. Inside his mind he had talked just enough, but outside there, there was nothing but silence and his own sobs, whimpers that actually told something. To En Dwi, they were enough to tell him about all of his pain, his grief, the fear and those little moments where he cannot find himself in the middle of an empty room. 

His response, however, was to come closer and touch his cold hands. To let Loki take them off his face and let it show itself all soaked with tears, and to intertwine them so softly yet so strong. 

The god felt as if all of that same shame earlier had faded away within the warmth of the elder’s grip, allowing himself to look at En Dwi’s pair of brown eyes. They shine with the lights from the outside, beneath them, from the city as he’s the heart and the mind of it. Feels like they’re one. Feels like Loki and En Dwi have something that leads them together, and it’s hidden in those same bright and vivid lights. 

“I can’t explain,” Loki says, not letting go of his eyes, “I don’t even know how to explain.” 

“Just—,” En Dwi started, but that was too complex to begin with. “Tell me how it feels like.”

 _It’s quite like being trapped inside an empty void with you and no one but you…_ But that wasn’t verbalized. Loki expected that En Dwi could understand it with a simple stare into his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t have to tell and uncomfortably drench himself all the way over again by telling so. Loki expected, thought, hoped — and he shouldn't do none of these. 

“Well,” the Grandmaster said, slowly reaching a hand to cup his face, his thumb stroking his cheek. He accepted it right away, tilting his head where the warmth can be found, his chest still hurt. “You can, uh… Left it unsaid. I won’t oblige you to say and, never, ever, I will be mad if you don’t say it.” Without noticing and quite like an impulse, he wiped a tear away when one fell again. “I’m just worried about what made you feel this way.” 

Loki placed a hand above his. 

“The consequence of my mistakes,” he muttered, finding it the only decent response to be spoken. _And…_ There was meant to have something else to add, but his throat hurts from holding back and letting them stay. Thorns. Fucking words that became thorns. 

“Don’t we all learn from them?” En Dwi said it back, his eyes shining as there’s something to laugh about it — at least in his case, with stories and stories that he would definitely tell if that means that it would calm Loki, or take his mind away from his anxiety. 

“We do,” Loki answers, sighing in relief as the rain poured hardly against the windows. 

“Then—,” Then the Grandmaster interrupts himself, seeing in his eyes that it’s really not Loki’s case. He still had lots to learn from the god of mischief. “Well,” he repeats once more, “it’s a matter of time until it’ll stop hurting us so badly. It might take little-to-no, either, too much. In the end, it’ll definitely stop.” 

He was silent, and, at this point, waiting for an answer or something else it’s… Asking too much from him. En Dwi saw that the storm brought into Loki’s eyes slowly, inch by inch, vanishes. No wind blowing it away and making it a little easy. 

Tears still fell from his face and he managed to wipe them. 

Unconsciously, Loki moved forward and laid his head on En Dwi’s shoulder in need of anything to hold onto, receiving, as response, En Dwi’s hand caressing his messy and unruly dark hair. The gesture invited him to allow himself to come closer, closer enough to him so he can be between the elder’s legs, wrapped within his embrace, within his comfort that he does in his manner. It doesn’t hurt much at all — doesn’t hurt that much to be seen by him, if it means that he can feel the slight but certain feeling of safety with him. If he can feel the warmth that compounds all the concrete and abstract things that made him fall for En Dwi. 

“Stardust,” he muttered, calling Loki’s attention this time. “You know what you should do?” 

“Hmm?” Still no words. 

“Let yourself feel something and not blame yourself for it.” 

It was a try; a try so reachable that it was certain into Loki’s thoughts, in his sinking heart and the lumps filled with wrath and sadness. It was right, even though right now it wouldn’t clear the skies in his eyes and suddenly everything goes back to normality; nope. He would take time, space, days. Although— It’s still a try. 

“Thank you,” Loki muttered back, holding him tight. The Grandmaster’s response was a kiss placed on the top of his head, which he valued quite a lot, but quietly. 

There’s still rain falling down, pouring as much as the god of mischief cried. He didn’t even know that he had that much inside himself. He got a little away from him, wiping his tears away — feeling watched by the man who didn’t let go of him — and staring at En Dwi for a while before laying his head on his shoulder once more, better positioned this time so he could see the windows next to them. There’s still silence. In the same comfortable silence, whose none of them felt an urge to talk — although En Dwi was still tempted to tell these old stories from his millenia back to millenia —, Loki focused quietly on the rain pouring, wondering why it was so soothing. Why the occasional lightning crossing the sky in two felt distanly pleasing. 

He believed — as he slowly regained a sense of the environment with the ups and downs from En Dwi’s chest — that it sorta reminded him of his brother. From home, from Asgard. Not the best nor the pleasing memories there, yet the thought of his family — broken, disrupted family — made him a little nostalgic even when that feeling often leaves a bittersweet taste in his mouth. This time it didn’t. Only the feeling reached him, not the memories. 

The rain poured, leaving vertical and transparent lines dripping so quickly on the window. A few dots were assimilated to stars as they reflected city lights. Some of them seemed like constellations, others as shooting stars. 

Loki felt En Dwi’s hand caressing his back. Inside his mind there’s no scream left, only a pause that the god hoped that it wouldn’t come back to its roots again. Instead, he heard his lover’s heartbeat at a steady pace, sounding as peaceful as ever. He took a deep breath — the first one in this night that had gone right — and then, another one according to that pace until his heart was pounding on the same steadiness. It took some time, making him realize how agitated he was and, well, now, very close to exhaustion if not there already. 

His eyes were closing when En Dwi’s hand slided up his back to his messy hair, once more caressing him softly. Normally a shiver would roam down his spine, but this time he felt none of these. Just tiredness that made his eyelids so heavy. He was in a warm, nice and cozy environment, plus the rain. Impossible to not feel this way.

A few minutes before it was possible.

Now he just wanted to let go of this stupid shame by the circumstances that led him into En Dwi’s embrace and enjoy this, the sincere moment where everything feels like settling down. 

Loki slowly drifted away into his sleep within the quietness of the room and the exhaustion of his body, that still felt uneasy from what had happened. Tomorrow, he hoped, everything would be just fine. He hoped. 

His head aches a little when he’s mid-unconsciousness. An arm wraps his legs and another one his back, lifting him up. Loki and En Dwi might be equally strong in matters of physical form, but this time, En Dwi made a little effort to put him into bed and cover him in blankets. Loki curled himself, feeling the contrast when his cold body touched the warm fabric of the sheets. He would get used to that— That’s the fun part of everything. The god, further into his sleep, woke himself up when En Dwi laid down with him and, unexpectedly, their eyes locked into one another while he covered himself. 

No words were left to say.

The satisfaction was clear in En Dwi’s eyes as he saw Loki’s ones turn into a calm blue one, its waters still uneasy. He reached a hand, caressing his face with the tip of his fingers as he watched his lover drift off to sleep once more. He had to wait patiently until he couldn’t deal with his own exhaustion anymore, sliding his hand to Loki’s chest once before fully drifting off to sleep.

The god’s hand closed above the elder’s one. 

In his dreams, in the unconsciousness of his mind, he thought about brown eyes shining like golden as the sun settled to later let rain pour at night. 

Silence at last. 

**Author's Note:**

> (uh)


End file.
